Personal Finance Without a Sales Pitch (2026)
The test was whether a source still works if you never buy anything. Most personal finance content fails it, because the content is the top of a funnel for a fund, a course, or an affiliate link.
What survives splits three ways. Reference you can check: the Bogleheads wiki, the r/personalfinance wiki, and the regulators' own material at Investor.gov, MyMoney.gov and SEBI's investor site. Tools: FINRA BrokerCheck, for looking someone up before you hand them money, and Portfolio Charts, for testing an allocation against history rather than against a sales deck. Writers with nothing to sell: Mike Piper, JL Collins's free Stock Series, Karsten Jeske's safe withdrawal rate series, Nick Maggiulli, and Morgan Housel at Collab Fund.
Two disclosures. Monevator's broker comparison table carries affiliate links. Nick Maggiulli works at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Both stayed because the writing earns it and the conflict is visible and one-directional.
This list is deliberately anglophone and mostly US and UK, and that is a limitation rather than a preference. Apart from SEBI's own investor site there is no Indian entry, because Indian equivalents of Bogleheads or Monevator do not really exist yet. The India-specific creators list is a separate collection for exactly that reason.
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